In a shocking twist, the parents of Madeleine McCann – a 3-year-old British girl who vanished last spring during a vacation in Portu gal – have been identified as sus pects in the tot’s disappearance, her family said.

Police in Portugal grilled par ents Kate and Gerry McCann for hours yesterday, and reportedly offered her a plea bargain in which she would get a short jail sentence if she admitted she was behind the disappearance that has shocked England.

The couple’s lawyer, Pinto Abreu, said, “They have not been charged, and the investigation continues.”

Earlier in the day, Kate McCann had been considered the sole sus pect.

“They tried to get her to con fess to having accidentally killed Madeleine by offering her a deal through her lawyer,” Gerry’s sis ter Philomena McCann told ITV News in England. “[They said,] ‘If you say you killed Madeleine by accident and then hid her and disposed of the body, then we can guarantee you a two- year jail sentence or even less.’ ”

“Little Maddie,” as she is known in the London press, vanished from a hotel room in the resort town of Praia da Luz on May 3, days before her fourth birthday.

Her parents have since be come familiar faces in the Brit ish media, making numerous appeals for help and meeting with major figures, including Pope Benedict XVI.

They have started a Web site on which they post updates on the search for the girl. They have also started a fund to find her, which has reportedly raised millions.

But yesterday the case took a turn reminiscent of that of Susan Smith, a South Carolina woman who killed her two sons in 1993 and then made a teary-eyed public appeal in which she claimed they were kidnapped.

Maddie’s parents reportedly became the top suspects in the disappearance after cops found blood in the trunk of a car that the family rented after the girl vanished.

The married couple has denied any role in the disappearance.

But Portuguese police thought otherwise. The mom was reportedly pelted with 22 questions about the day the girl vanished.

Police specifically wanted to know about the blood in the car, which had not yet been linked to the girl.

Also, dogs brought from England to search for the girl’s body reportedly identified a smell on the mom that authorities thought suspicious.

Philomena McCann scoffed at the idea that her sister-in-law had been perpetrating a cover-up.

“They are suggesting that Kate has in some way accidentally killed Madeleine, then kept her body, then got rid of it,” she said.

“Can you imagine? The whole world has been watching Gerry and Kate for the last four months,” she added. “Where do they hide their wee girl when they are in a foreign country where they just don’t know people? The suggestions are just ludicrous.”

The tall, attractive Kate, a medical doctor, was jeered by a crowd as she was taken into the police station yesterday.